Discuss about the Information Management for Case Study of Northumbria Country Foods.
Northumbria Country Foods (NCF) is a company that manufacturers both traditional as well as contemporary food in order to expand the chilled ready meals markets. Dr. Beth Walker founded the company and started the organization as a cooperative of family as well as friends. There are different types of issues with the ready meal producer but the company has overcome the challenges by producing healthy products. The various demand of the ready meal of the organization in increasing and therefore the organization wants to upgrade its manual system into a new automatic information system.
The assignment helps in unearthing the various benefits that is gained by NCF by adopting an Information system. Several suggestions are provided to the organization in order to gain competitive advantage. The report discusses the reasons behind implementation of new information system in the organization. The report also discusses some of the recommendation about implementation of Information System.
The implementation of new Information System in the company “Northumbria Country Foods” would be very helpful in managing various operations of the businesses and for gaining competitive advantage in the market. The organization can achieve several types of benefits by implementing the new information system in context to supply, marketing and handling of the customers (Gohel & Gondalia, 2013). The Information system is mainly designed in order to collect, process, distribute as well as filter the data which is required for supporting the different operations of the organization. The adaption of the new information system would help the organization in solving several challenges that are related with management and operation. It helps in reducing the response time for creating an effective and efficient co-ordination between the different departments of the organization (Dumais et al., 2016). The Information system is helpful in tracking the various activities of NCF. IS helps in reducing the indulgence of human power, which further helps in reducing the human error that occurs die to neglecting the professional skill.
The benefits of using the new Information System in the organization” NCF” includes:
Information Access: The data, which is stored in the database, can be retrieved very easily with the help of the Information System.
Communication: The Information system helps in proper and effective communication between the different stakeholders of the organization (Bonham-Carter, 2014). The technology helps in providing e-mails, voice and video calls and many more.
Effective decision-making: The stakeholders can take effective and efficient decision for the development of the organization with the help of the Information System.
Availability: With the help of the information system, the business of NCF can be kept open at anytime and at anywhere (Buzan, Griffiths & Harrison, 2014). It means that the customers can buy or order their meals at anytime.
Figure 1: Benefits of New Information system
(Source: Carlton & Perloff, 2015, pp- 514)
Data Storage: The historic information of NCF can be kept in record in order to calculate the growth of the organization and for acting accordingly for sustainable growth of the organization (Dumais et al., 2016).
Cost Effectiveness and Productivity: The Information system helps in promoting operation that is more efficient and it helps in improving the supply of information to the various stakeholders.
The Business Information System helps in keeping the records of the suppliers for managing the accounting system. The process is automatic and thus it becomes very easy for the managers of the organization to find the various records.
In order to gain various competitive advantage and for surviving in the market, the business organization must follow an effective strategy. For flourishing rapidly, it is suggested that the organization must follow E-business system. The E-business system is followed by NCF by following the five basic competitive strategies (Dobbs, 2014).The implementation of E-business in NCF would help the company in building strong relationship with the customers. The customer can access the portal of the company from any of the remote location and can order the meal (Marshall, 2013). The support chat option, which is present on the portal of the company, helps the customers in connecting lively with the organization. The customer customers can interact directly with the customer care of the organization for solving any of the issue that they face during the usage of the site. The Business Intelligence is very much useful for cost leadership and the social media can be utilized by the company for capturing the market for various types of advertisement. The alliance with the MNC helps NCF in gaining brand value.
Cost-Effective Marketing: The electronic business helps NCF in achieving their goals and objectives in terms of cost-effectiveness (Dobbs, 2014). It helps in creating various types of operational and marketing strategies for lowering the expenses of the organization.
Flexible Hours of Business: E-Business is helpful in breaking down the time barriers, which are encountered by the businesses, which is fully dependent on the location.
Innovation: NCF utilize various data frameworks in order to recognize as well as helps in adding new features for distinguishing various competitors (Perdana, Roshetko & Kurniawan, 2012). Innovation is considered as the key to success for many organizations and it contains the power to open new opportunities for the organizations
Figure 2: Benefits from E-Business System
(Source: Gohel & Gondalia, 2013, pp- 49).
Growth: Northumbria Country Foods helps in utilizing the data frameworks for extending the various local as well as universal operations for the incorporation and differentiation of new products and services ( Dobbs, 2014). It helps in building Omni-Channel technique in order to accelerate the growth.
Elimination of Geographic Boundaries:With the help Of E-business NCF, can broaden its reach. The online business can reach to every customer and as a result, the number of customer increases day by day.
Reduction in Transaction Cost: The E-business will be helpful in reducing the transaction cost of the organization. The customers can place their order online and therefore it removes the need of a salesperson (Kuperman, Gardner & Pryor, 2013). The online system of operation will be efficient for NCF as it helps in reducing the number of employees within the organization.
Social media can be utilized by the company for promoting various processes of the businesses and for expanding the business world widely (McLay, 2014). The creation of a page on the social media for the customers would help in tracking the followers of the organization. The judgment of the reaction is very much helpful in changing the current strategy of the business for surviving in the market.
The BI helps the organization in taking proper decisions and helps in implementing proper strategy for flourishing the business (Perdana, Roshetko & Kurniawan, 2012). The implementation of effective decision helps in aligning the information system for gaining competitive advantage.
The steps that are necessary for the proper and effective implementation of Information System in Northumbria Country Foods include:
Identification of Stakeholders: The key stakeholders of the project and the various processes of business must be identified.
Indentifying use case: Identification of various list of use case, which helps in describing the interactions that are made by the actors (Carlton & Perloff, 2015)
Indentifying the roles of stakeholders: The various roles of the stakeholders must be identified in order to have proper interaction with the system
Proper and effective management: Proper and effective management of the products where different artifacts are collected and delivered for the development process of the project (Simons, 2013)
Identifying different list of objects: The different lists as well as objects must be identified for designing and implementing the various methods and properties, which are required for completing the steps.
The impact of the new Information system on the organization is explained below:
Step 1: List of Stakeholders is identified
The people who are related with the Information system of the organization either directly or indirectly must be listed (Bonham-Carter, 2014). The individuals who have the power of influencing the system with the help of their position are known as stakeholders and the listing of the various stakeholders of the organization must be the utmost objective for creating an effective as well as efficient information system within the organization.
Step 2: Listing and identifying the various actors
The actors are very much required during listing procedure of the stakeholders and they also helps in describing the various expectations of the actors (Stair & Reynolds, 2013). The actor’s help in providing an overall idea about the system and they also define the various functions, which are required for developing the information system. The actors must be capable of stating their requirements for developing fully functional system.
Step 3: Listing and identifying the various Use Case
A detailed analysis is made on the requirements of the organization and then a use case must be prepared. The use case helps in providing the overall view of the system and its various functionalities (Baskerville & Wood-Harper, 2016). The use case can also be used in order to capture the ideas of the future that is helpful in delivering more functions to the business processes of the organization.
Step 4: Listing and identifying the scenario
The use case, which is developed by following the execution process, can be broken into more number of steps. The paths that are identified in the use case can be followed by the actors. The different paths are defined as scenario and not all the scenarios are important (Simons, 2013). The normal scenario is required for intending the various executions. The scenarios are generally considered as flow charts for describing the pathways of the use case.
Step 5: Identifying and listing the steps
The progress of each step must be recorded and the use case of the developed steps must be described clearly (Carlton & Perloff, 2015). The steps must be identified in order to check the progress of the project as well as for tracking the success of the project.
Step 6: Identifying and listing the various classes and objects
For proper and effective execution of the use case, internal objects of the business organization are very much required (Simons, 2013). The classes and objects are defined during the designing phase and the coding of the system is provided based on the design.
Step 7: Managing different work of the products
The progress of the work must be noted in a project workbook during the development procedure of the Information System. The workbook must contain several requirements, responsibilities and roles for the developmental practices in order to manage the project efficiently.
The Information system in NCF must be implemented in order to meet all the requirements of the organization. Several recommendations are also provided to the company in order to align the Information system with the current procedure of business. The recommendations include:
User Friendly: The new information system of NCF must be user friendly and it must function effectively in order to meet all the demands and needs of the organization. The company must focus on various strategies that would be helpful in gaining competitive advantage over the market.
Decentralized: The new and innovative system must be decentralized and should be capable of solving all the local problems. They must be responsive for the various types of operational requirements.
Scope of Modification: The developed system must contain some scope of modification in order to increase the efficiency of the system. Adding new functional modules are helpful in sustaining the change in the requirement and it helps the business to survive in the competitive market.
Helps in Processing: The new Information system must process the supply chain processes of the organization and must be helpful in processing the order. They must be capable of producing automated report for the orders that are placed by the customers.
Conclusion
The Organization “Northumbria Country Foods” have received benefit from the issues that have occurred in ready meal producers. Thus the organization wants to implement new information system in order to gain competitive advantage and for managing that various operations of the organization effectively. It is analyzed from the report that several advices are provided to the organization regarding the implementation procedure of the information system. The report discusses the various benefits that can be gained by the organization after implementing the information system. The use of Business Intelligence is quite significant in order to flourish the business of NCF. From the various analyses, it is considered that E-Business system is significant for addressing the development of the organization. Several steps of implementation are also provided in order to assists the future growth of Northumbria Country Foods.
References
Al-Mamary, Y. H., Shamsuddin, A., & Aziati, N. (2015). The Pilot Test Study of Relationship between Management Information System Success Factors and Organization Performance at Sabafon Company in Yemen. International Journal of u-and e-Service, Science and Technology, 8(2), 337-346.
Baskerville, R. L., & Wood-Harper, A. T. (2016). A critical perspective on action research as a method for information systems research. In Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems: Volume 2 (pp. 169-190). Springer International Publishing.
Bonham-Carter, G. F. (2014). Geographic information systems for geoscientists: modelling with GIS (Vol. 13). Elsevier.
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Carlton, D. W., & Perloff, J. M. (2015). Modern industrial organization. Pearson Higher Ed.
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Dumais, S., Cutrell, E., Cadiz, J. J., Jancke, G., Sarin, R., & Robbins, D. C. (2016, January). Stuff I’ve seen: a system for personal information retrieval and re-use. In ACM SIGIR Forum (Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 28-35). ACM.
Dobbs, M. (2014). Guidelines for applying Porter’s five forces framework: a set of industry analysis templates.Competitiveness Review,24(1), 32-45.
Gohel, H., & Gondalia, V. (2013). Executive Information Advancement of Knowledge Based Decision Support System for Organization of United Kingdom. International journal of advanced and innovative research, 41-50.
Kuperman, G. J., Gardner, R. M., & Pryor, T. A. (2013). HELP: a dynamic hospital information system. Springer Science & Business Media.
Marshall, S. (2013). Evaluating the strategic and leadership challenges of MOOCs. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 9(2), 216.
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